Woman says therapy speak has ruined her friend group: ‘Any confronting text or conversation to talk about what happened was met with sterile therapy speak and almost corporate HR problem management’

When the friend group starts feeling like an HR departmentWhat happens when we start managing our friendships instead of actually experiencing them? We've got to a point where all the Instagram infographics have taught us different gibberish to validate our shortcomings.It's all about managing conflict, keeping everyone else's pain away, and documenting harm. Yet friendship requires more willingness, capability to accept ambiguity, and other things bureaucracy can't provide.Take this situation: a feeling might be real, for example, if you felt disrespected by your friends, but that doesn't make the interpretation attached to that feeling automatically correct. Someone can feel genuinely betrayed without having been betrayed intentionally. Equally, someone can cause harm without originally intending to.An online culture that doesn't have any room for context, proportionality, and intent can make relationships impossible.Does feeling hurt automatically imply a wrongdoing? Can we relate anymore, or is it all about our self-perception? Is there no room for the other person's experience?Interpreting conflict and reaching agreements seem to have become a lost art. Every action these day…

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